About Me


Early Life
Once upon a time I was born in the capital city of Athens, but my parents thought it would be better to raise me in a Castle*. When I was 3, I started my ballet classes and by the age of 7 my English and piano lessons. Life went by and it was time for me to get in a University. Although my first choice was Communication and Media, I ended up in Primary Education due to my average total grade (17/20). While planning to re-sit two of the four basic subjects (that was back in 1996), I went to Patras just for the sake of the experience, but then I met my Duke... and that changed the course of everything!

Living Abroad
After getting my degree, I went for a MSc in Human Resources in the Management School of the University of Surrey, in England. WHAT AN EXPERIENCE. During that year, I pushed myself to the limits, studied really hard, overcame obstacles, gained a little more faith, learned from a few mistakes and got to know a lot about people from other countries and appreciated their cultures. Also, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease.

Getting a Job
Then, I came back to Athens to find a job in HR. Things didn't go as planned in my head, so I decided to do a 6-month internship in a multinational ad agency, Grey Worldwide. Besides, this was what I wanted to do in the first place and there was an opening so I grabbed the opportunity. After Grey, then came JWT and then Publicis where I became an Account Director managing huge multinational clients like L'Oreal, Nestle, HP and more.

The Blog
After 10 years of working my @$$ off in advertising, the Duke and I decided that it was time to expand our family, so I left my job and became a housewife. In between fertility treatments and hundreds of hours on the internet navigating fashion blogs and sites, a personal style blog became my tiny digital paradise and couldn't be called anything else but Barefoot Duchess: I am married to a Duke** and I can never have enough shoes.

About Fashion
I will never claim or suggest that I am a fashion expert or specialist because I am not! However, fashion has been a large part of my life, ever since I can remember myself, through my mom's fashion magazines that came into our house in bulks, my grandfather's impeccable sense of style and... television. I grew up experimenting (I was a teen in the 90s for Christ's sake...) and my youth style icons were Madonna, Kurt Cobain and Alexis Carrington Colby, the legendary Dynasty character played by Joan Collins!

* Castle = Pyrgos/Πύργος, a small city in the Western Peloponnese.
** My husband's name in Greek means Duke

Photo by The Duke